Fire Time (20 page)

‘Coffee or tea?’ he asked as he settled down behind his desk. ‘And would you like a cigar?’

‘Nothing, thanks.’ Sparling’s voice might have blown off the south pole. He folded his lean length into a chair, took forth pipe and tobacco pouch, and got busy. ‘I don’t expect to be here long.’

‘I was hoping you would.’

‘Why should I?’

‘I mentioned a consultant’s fee. And with your project suspended, you have nothing else to do, have you?’ Dejerine considered the aquiline face. ‘I won’t make noises about patriotism. Let us be frank, you are hostile to my mission. But the sooner I complete it, the sooner I can release your resources back to you. Won’t you help to that end?’ He paused. ‘Furthermore – please don’t misunderstand, this is neither a threat nor a bribe – I would like to see regular supplies coming to you from Earth again. My recommendations will carry more weight if I have done a good job fast.’

Sparling in turn studied him. ‘All right,’ he said at length. ‘I think probably you are a decent sort. As we foulup humans go.’

Dejerine inhaled a cigar alight. However tiny, this thawing was an encouragement, especially since the engineer was a close friend of Jill. He should use the opportunity to learn a little more about these people. ‘Will you bear with a personal question?’ he asked.

Sparling smiled sourly. ‘Go ahead. I may not answer.’

‘Why do you long-term dwellers here have such an inferiority complex with respect to the Ishtarians?’

The other man was startled. ‘Huh? Who says we do?’

‘Perhaps I phrased it badly,’ Dejerine conceded. ‘But I have heard repeatedly how many superiorities to our species they have, both physical and mental. And yet… they fight wars too, don’t they?’

‘Not every war is as senseless as yours,’ Sparling snapped. He sat quiet for a few seconds. ‘No. Excuse me. I shouldn’t have made that remark, no matter how true it is. But as for, m-m, combative behavior, it can be a survival mechanism. To the best of my information and belief, no Ishtarians fight
for anything but strictly practical reasons.’ A new pause. ‘Not quite correct. Pride or revenge can be a motive, particularly in the young. However, always an individual motive. No Ishtarian ever tried to force a nationality or an ideology on someone else. Under all circumstances, killing is looked on as a regrettable last-ditch necessity.’

‘Still, they do have ideologies, don’t they? Such as various religions.’

‘Yeah. They aren’t fanatical about them.’ Sparling seemed to grow more amicable as he talked. ‘I don’t believe any Ishtarian can become what we’d call ardently religious. Certainly this planet has never seen a proselytizing faith.’

‘Not the – Triadic, do they call it?’ Dejerine ventured a smile. ‘I have been reading, you see. How does that church gain converts?’

‘By making more sense, to many people, than paganism does. At that, it isn’t easy to get into. There’s a lot of hard study required first, and examinations, and finally an expensive sacrifice. But you know, if I had a religious inclination, I’d think wistfully about joining.’

‘What? You can’t be serious. Personifying the three suns–’

‘A symbol. You can suppose they are literal gods, but you don’t have to; you can take the personalities as allegorical if you prefer, tokens of the reality.’ Sparling looked thoughtfully at the smoke drifting from his pipe. ‘And the mythology does contain a great deal of truth about life, with poetry and ritual to help you feel it more directly. Bel,
the
Sun, the life-giver, who can also be terrible; Ea, the Ember Star, a diadem on the Dark which is winter and death – but the world needs them; Anu, the Rover, bringing both chaos and a chance for renewal. Yes, it strikes me as quite a bit more reasonable than a Christian God who’s simultaneously one person and three, who’s called merciful but left us to handle creations of his like cancer and stroke.’

Dejerine, who considered himself a Christian, refrained from saying more than: ‘Have there been conversions among humans?’

‘No,’ Sparling said. ‘Nor will be, I’m sure. If nothing else,
since we can’t dream right, we’d miss half the significance. We’d be like a Catholic forever unable to attend Mass or take communion. No, worse off; he could read his missal.’

‘Dreams?’ Dejerine frowned. ‘Like the medicine dreams of primitive humans?’

‘Not at all. You don’t know? Well, it’s so subtle and difficult an idea – for us – that I suppose it’s not gotten into the average popular account of this planet. Ishtarians sleep like us, and apparently for the same basic reason: the brain needs time off the line, to assimilate data. But the Ishtarian’s forebrain doesn’t shut down as thoroughly as ours. He keeps more consciousness than we do. To a certain extent, he can direct his dreaming.’

‘I’ve had that experience myself, when barely asleep.’

‘Most humans have. With us, though, it’s rudimentary and unusual. It’s normal for the Ishtarian. He can choose what he’ll dream about. It becomes a major part of his emotional life – maybe one reason why, in spite of using a few drugs, Ishtarians never become addicted. Of course, some have more talent for it than others. There are actually professional dreamers. They use that blend of consciousness and randomness to experience marvelous visions, and an entire art of communicating the effect afterward to an audience. Words, tone, gesture, expression, music, dance, an enormous body of ancient conventions, all go into it.’ Sparling sighed. ‘We’ll never be able to share that, you and I. So, since I can’t dream the Triad, it can’t be anything more to me ever than a philosophical concept.’

Dejerine drank smoke. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘I see how the Ishtarians could have a … a rather overwhelming impact. But I don’t feel they are necessarily inherently superior, except in a few departments.’

‘Nor do I, nor any sensible person,’ Sparling answered. ‘For instance, insofar as we can separate culture and heredity – which isn’t very bloody damn far – they seem to have less sense for three-dimensional geometry than we do. Maybe because of having no arboreal ancestors? A lot of them are terrified of flying, though they know our vehicles are safe. Et cetera. No, you’re wrong about an inferiority
complex. We simply consider them our friends, from whom we can learn a huge amount if Earth’s politicos will get off our backs.’

‘Will you believe that I too have been close to nonhumans?’ Dejerine asked softly.

Sparling nodded.

It flashed in Dejerine:
He is becoming better disposed to me. Perhaps he will carry an olive branch to Jill?

Am I in love with her? Or is it merely charm that met a long-standing celibacy, like steel meeting flint? I don’t know. I never will know unless I can see her again. Often.

He said with care, ‘Would you mind mentioning that to Miss Conway, if opportunity should arise? I’m afraid she is angry at me because I couldn’t help her native official. She gave me no chance to explain how sorry I was.’

Abruptly Sparling froze over. ‘How can I do that?’

A hand took hold of Dejerine’s heart and squeezed. ‘Is something wrong with her?’

‘No way to tell,’ Sparling clipped. ‘She’s gone north with Larreka. They’ve been on the trail for days.’

‘What? Why, that is crazy!’

‘How’d you stop her? If she chooses to do research in Valennen before it’s closed to us, who has the right to forbid her? At that, she sent notes to her parents and me by a messenger who was not to deliver them till she was well on her way. I flitted over the route but saw nothing. Didn’t really expect to, that small a party in that big and rugged a landscape. I called, but naturally they’d switched off their transceivers when they passed beyond ordinary relay range.’

‘Why in cosmos would she do so mad a thing?’

‘Because she’s Jill, and wants to help. Yeah, “intervention”. But she calls it research, and you’d have a sweet time proving different, Dejerine. She’ll phone when she reaches Port Rua, and quite likely I’ll find a research project for myself in those parts at that time. Now dog your hatch! Haven’t you done enough harm?’

‘And lang, lang may the maidens sit,

Wi’ the goud kaims in their hair,

A’ waiting for their ain dear loves,

For them they’ll see na mair.

‘O forty miles off Aberdour,

’Tis fifty fathoms deep,

And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,

Wi’ the Scots lairds at his feet.’

Jill finished the ancient words which she had put into the tongue of Sehala – for Ishtarians who didn’t know English were often eager to hear the music of Earth – and kept her guitar ringing on while she whistled in the way of a wind over cold seas. It flitted through her awareness that she had always taken such performances for granted; but what would the unknown maker of the ballad think, could he be called from the dust and across a thousand light-years to this night?

In it, Larreka’s party were camped on the northern slope of the Red Hills. Ahead of them reached the Badlands, the Dalag, and at last the coast where they would take a legionary ship. In that open tropical country, under two suns most of the day, they would travel after dark as much as might be. But here they had forest to shade them, and to make them half blind, thus slow, when stars and moons alone gave light. Therefore they rested.

A low fire tinged faces, manes, forequarters of her companions, where they reposed in a circle and every eye gleamed toward her. Further off among shadows glinted the spearheads of the watch; if nothing else, tree lions might be made sufficiently desperate by dwindling game to attack sophonts. Closer hunched the bales of supplies and a tent
raised for her protection against any sudden, flayingly violent storm. She didn’t expect one. The forest walled this glade in unstirring murk, stars smoldered above, the air hung warm and full of heavy pungencies She planned to shed her few garments and sleep outside on top of her bag. Still, nobody could tell for sure what weather Anu might bring.

Her tones died away. For a time, legionaries and porters lay thoughtful, only switching their tails in the male sign for Thank you.’

Finally a young trooper asked, ‘What did the females do?’

‘Eh?’ Jill was brought from a reverie.
Ah, well, just speculating about what it all means, life and death, suns and worlds, the kind of question which has to get asked over and over but I don’t suppose can ever be answered.
‘The human females in the song? They mourned.’

‘Yes, but how?’

‘Oh. I see. At first, when someone they love dies, most humans sob and, uh, shed water from their eyes. Afterward they carry on their lives as best they’re able.’

‘Who helps them through?’

‘We … we don’t have institutions like yours to uphold the bereaved. Prayers and some ceremonies are all, and not everyone uses them. The need is less.’ Quickly, Jill added, ‘I don’t think this is because we care for each other less than your kind does. How could you measure?’ Her mind presented an image of a dolorimeter, neatly crackle-finished for maximum sales, calibrated against the International Standard Snake whose belly people feel as low as (thus making the unit of grief a length). It did not quite undermine her seriousness. ‘Besides, when this particular song was composed, people believed they would meet again in an afterlife.’

‘Like the Valennen barbarians,’ observed a soldier. ‘I reckon that’s what keeps them going. They don’t seem to have much else, except for eating their dead if they can.’

Larreka sat up on his haunches, abruptly looming over Jill, who was on the ground leaned back against a leatherbark
bole. ‘Don’t despise ’em for that, son,’ he drawled. An Ishtarian voice carried so many nuances that the other might just as well have spoken words of open contempt. ‘Giving your body is your last service in a hungry land; and they think that eating it is a service to you, freeing the soul faster than ordinary decay would.’ Reflectively: ‘My guess is, the notion got started in the Dalag, same as a lot of different religious notions did. And there are a lot of them, never forget. Who’re we to say any system – including what humans have worked out – is better than the rest?’

‘Well, sir, I’ve seen a few practices myself, and heard of more,’ the trooper replied. ‘Most make sense. But who could take some of them seriously? Like, ng-ng, in the back country on Little Iren they torture themselves after a death. I’ye actually seen an old female stick her hand into boiling water.’

‘Certain humans used to practice self-mutilation in sorrow,’ Jill told them. ‘Less extreme; but then, our bodies can’t repair themselves as fast or fully as yours. Pain in the flesh – in your case, the effort to control it – covers pain in the spirit. Not that I’d try it myself, understand.’

Larreka took forth pipe and tobacco pouch and began to stuff the bowl. ‘What’s right is what works for you,’ he said, ‘and no two yous are alike. A good thing about the Gathering, maybe the best thing, is it gives you a chance to look around and find what way of life suits you the closest – or start a new way, if you can corral a few disciples.’

Without being preachy, his tone was unwontedly earnest. Jill thought:
I read you, Uncle. You want to strengthen the faith in these males. They’re young, they don’t have your perspective on civilization, throughout their lives they’ve known only that it’s likely to go under in the time that’s now on us. In such a case, a legionary in his first or second eight-year enlistment might wonder if it’s worth standing fast and dying for. Especially when it won’t support us in the lonely place where we’re bound. You’ll take every chance you can get to tell them.

She felt sure she was correct when he went slowly on: ‘Take me. If ’tweren’t for the Gathering I might’ve become a
bandit, or at best dragged out a pretty dreary existence. Instead, well, life’s done me right, chopped me up a bit here and there but no more than was reasonable for all I’ve gotten out of it.’

Ears pricked. Jill’s would have too, were they able. Larreka had told her scores of stories from his career, but few from his beginnings.

‘Would you like to hear?’ he asked. ‘I’m in a kind of backward-looking mood tonight–’

You dear old fraud!
Jill thought. Or,
if you really feel reminiscent, you’ve got a king-sized ulterior motive as well.